Do you find yourself asking “why can’t I sleep?” Are you tired of waking up more tired than when you went to bed? Does it seem like a good night’s sleep is more elusive than your half-remembered dreams?
If you’ve been having a tough time falling or staying asleep, chances are the cause is either something you’re doing or something you’re not doing. Fortunately, there are a number of steps you can take to address the problem.
Why Do People Sleep Too Much?
For people who suffer from hypersomnia, oversleeping is actually a medical disorder. The condition causes people to suffer from extreme sleepiness throughout the day, which is not usually relieved by napping. It also causes them to sleep for unusually long periods of time at night. Many people with hypersomnia experience symptoms of anxiety, low energy, and memory problems as a result of their almost constant need for sleep.
Obstructive sleep apnea, a disorder that causes people to stop breathing momentarily during sleep, can also lead to an increased need for sleep. That’s because it disrupts the normal sleep cycle.
Of course, not everyone who oversleeps has a sleep disorder. Other possible causes of oversleeping include the use of certain substances, such as alcohol and some prescription medications. Other medical conditions, including depression, can cause people to oversleep. And then there are people who simply want to sleep a lot.
Too much sleep is not good for you!
When we think about sleeping, we usually think ‘the more, the better. We prefer to sleep for at least eight hours and if we can, we like to sleep a little more during the weekend. It sounds fine – healthy even: because you need as much sleep as you can get, right? That turns out not to be true. Sleeping too much isn’t good for you at all and it can have a couple of annoying consequences!
The next time you want to press the snooze button and curl up again, it’s best to keep this in mind. This is what happens when you sleep too much!
- You’re feeling ‘hazy’: when you’ve slept for too long, you don’t feel completely clear-headed. You try to think clearly, but for some reason you can’t focus and your brain isn’t capable of finishing your thoughts. This same feeling can also occur when you’ve pressed the snooze button a few too many times in the morning.
- You’ve got a headache: some people get a headache when they haven’t slept enough, but you can also get one when you’ve slept too much. This is what Dr. Elizabeth McDevitt, researcher at the Sleep and Cognition Lab at the University of California, states. “When people sleep later in the morning, they may be sleeping past their normal breakfast or coffee time, and the headaches may be related to caffeine withdrawals, low blood sugar, or dehydration,” she told Reader’s Digest.
- Your body aches all over: it can feel so good to crawl into bed after a long day and fall asleep, but when you lie in bed for too long, your body can start to ache. This might be because you move your body a lot less while you’re asleep than when you’re awake, which makes you feel stiff.
- You wake up feeling tired: it might sound counter-intuitive, but when you spend too much time asleep, you can wake up feeling very tired. How come? It’s because you throw off your biological clock. It starts giving your cells signs that tell a different story than what’s actually going on. You might only crawl out of bed at 11 am, but your cells have been active since 7. This causes a feeling that’s similar to jet lag.
